New Stuff

This is a US five-year advanced technology demonstration. It will soon become a TTCP Group. They had a Coalition Workshop at DREV Sept. 26-28, 2000 (which I attended). Their interest is in providing a common operating picture (COP) for those in command and operators. CINC 21. Clearly this is of related interest for our group.

NRC Virtual Environment Technologies Centre (VETC)

Mostly VE/VR focused

The VETC is a national, industry-driven, knowledge based centre, dedicated to fostering the adoption, by Canadian industries, of advanced visualization technologies

• An R&D facility to develop industrial solutions
• An application & solutions centre
• A training, support, and education centre
• A technology showcase

PanCanadian Petroleum unveils Canada's first full-sized, 3-D visualization centre for oil and gas exploration:

http://www.newswire.ca/releases/January2000/17/c0570.html

This is a bit dated now, but still a valuable resource:

http://superior.omg.unb.ca/Infovis/

UofT:

UofT’s Dynamic Graphics Project

List of Graphics Projects at Canadian Universities:

<what follows is old, but slightly updated>

NetViz/VITA

Ben Houston (Carleton University), Zack Jacobson (CAC)

NetViz (aka VITA) is a visualization frontend for a "concept" oriented search engine. NetViz features an interactive 3D visualization of the relationships between concepts and their associated documents. A custom-designed artificial gravity acting on the visualized hits, concepts, queries and documents sorts multiple "hits" from semantic search engines targeting massive text corpora. This capacity allows a user easily and interactively to assess connections among elements and documents in the corpora, identifying relations and features not otherwise known or visible. The interface is generic–it is applicable to all of the semantic engines currently known to us; likely it is extendable to more traditional Boolean search engines, as well. Collaboration between Canada and UK is planned.

Justin Hollands

Planned work in my laboratory is to investigate the use of 3D dynamic graphics to depict quantitative data, and in determining effective techniques for doing so. The integration of quantitative status information into electronic charts for naval applications is one area; battlefield visualization is another. The approach is heavily empirical, building simplified displays and testing them for specific tasks. The laboratory contains a state-of-the-art NT graphics workstation and 3D liquid-crystal shutter eyewear. One of the aims is to build a demonstration platform based on what is known about human performance with graphical elements, in keeping with the Statement of Work for our TG.

The IRONMAN 1.5 is an instrumented testbed and environment to join, adapt, test and merge data from several generic network management tools, and merge this information in turn with network Management's security policy. System integration is being conducted by Systolics Ltd., who have also suggested several visualization displays. CAC is tasked to design displays as well, and evaluate display design IRONMAN displays show the logical structure of a network domain and its subdomains. A set of coloured bars represents one computer and its vulnerabilities [red most dangerous…]. Attacks can be identified, showing the target computer (and the attacking computer if it is on the domain). The drilldown screen [lower left] shows the vulnerabilities of a machine when it is "brushed". IRONMAN has evolved into that of an instrumented testbed, which can be used to explore, test and evaluate COTS management tools.

The research focus of the NRC Interactive Information Group is to develop new models of communication of information; algorithms and software for text analysis and retrieval. Martin Brooks leads the Group. Norman Vinson

is a member of the Group whose work focuses on visual perception and spatial cognition as they relate to human-computer interaction. He is also interested in the psychological processes involved in data visualization and analysis. His current project is to devise and illustrate design principles supporting human navigation in virtual or augmented reality.

At CISTI, Jeffrey Demaine examines the design of 3D user interfaces used to aid in visualizing large sets of bibliographic data, for use in search tools based on web technology. HTML, VRML and Cold Fusion are incorporated into user interfaces for data mining and information visualization. He also presented at the IEEE/NRC Information Visualization Workshop Ottawa June 99.

See also:

http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/pubs/netnotes/notes35.htm

This group specializes in three major areas: visualization, virtual reality, and rendering. Three faculty are involved: John Buchanan, Mark Green, and Ben Watson. Visualization research is concerned with network protocol analysis, the visualization of large data sets that do not have obvious geometrical structure (e.g., software systems, UNIX directory hierarchies genetic databases), and scientific visualization, including the use of VR techniques in the visualization of fluid flow. NEC, Hewlett-Packard and NSERC fund this work.

HCI Group CRIM (Centre for Information Research of Montreal)

http://www.crim.ca/hci/indiv/vroomen_vis/

An emphasis on an experimental visualization technique for hierarchical data called CHEOPS. This technique combines a representation process based on triangle tesselation principles and a set of rules determining the underlying abstract logical relations among the elements.

Phil Warrick & W. R. J. Funnell

CM³ (Computer-Mediated Creation & Management of Curricular Material), is part of the the McGill Medical Informatics Project. The overall objectives of this project are to identify tools for the cost-effective creation and management of large bodies of curricular material; and to use the tools to create material for use in their medical curriculum and to create databases, retrieval interfaces, etc., for exploiting that material. The project has three parts. The first is the 'computerization' of the large body of existing material incorporating the McGill medical curriculum. The second is to develop tools for the management of the information, including information-retrieval tools. The third is to apply interactive multimedia techniques, including interactive 3-D models, to display the information. The project should help to develop cost-effective ways of creating and maintaining large amounts of interactive multimedia material.

Uri Ascher , Jim Varah, Brian Wetton

The primary objective of the UBC Scientific Computation and Visualization Laboratory (SCV) is the development of fast, reliable numerical algorithms used to model a variety of physical phenomena. Thus, the group's research interests encompass both the theoretical and applied aspects of scientific computation, while various scientific visualization packages provide a crucial tool in the development and evaluation of these methods.

Bill Wright

Visible Decisions develops and markets information visualization software packages, including In3D and SeeIT. In3D is a developer suite for creating business "visualizations". SeeIT is an end user platform for information visualization. A demo version can be downloaded from the Visible Decisions web site. Both packages map data into a 3D visual representation called an "Information Landscape™", which is essentially a dynamic, interactive 3D plot of a data set. In3D is designed to fit into an existing application, while giving the designer control over the appearance and behavior of the landscape. The intent is to provide a dynamic view of large quantities of information on a single screen.

NVision Software Systems Inc. ("NVision") develops data visualization products that with the aim of enabling the user to add interactive information navigation capabilities to applications. NVision is a privately owned company formed in the spring of 1997 as a spin-off from the University of New Brunswick's Human-Computer Interaction Lab. NVision's flagship product is NV3D (NestedVision3D). NV3D is a visualization system for multiple applications (e.g., software engineering, business intelligence, directory management, network management, data mining) and other areas where large sets of complex data are being analyzed. NV3D uses 3D graphics, and "responsive" interaction techniques to provide a tool for presenting and analyzing huge amounts of information in an easy to understand manner. There is a standalone version (NV3D), an application enhancement (the NV3D Tool Kit0, and an add-in for C++ developers (NV3D for Visual Studio®) for visualizing source code.

The NV3D products are designed and developed "to enable users to better understand and analyze large complex information structures". NV3D represents information structures as interactive three-dimensional graphs. Entities are represented as three-dimensional nodes (boxes) and the relationships between them as arcs (lines). For example, in visualizing software code, nodes might represent functions, while the arcs represent the function calls between them. The user can change views to depict more global or local views using a feature called nesting., where the overall complexity of graphs is reduced by hiding entire sub-graphs within high-level nodes. When the user wants to find more detailed information, the nodes can be opened up to show more detailed data by double-clicking on them. Positioned around the perimeter of the visualization area are 3D navigational widgets, which allow you to zoom in and out, rotate, and translate the graph.

Flucome 2000 will take place on August 13-17 of year 2000 at Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec. The event will provide an international forum for exchanges on recent progresses and projected directions in the fields of fluid control, measurements and visualization as well as thermal plasmas. As in previous symposia, participants will include experts from the different fields and younger members of the scientific community. This forum will promote discussions on state-of-the-art aspects of the different fields and initiate future collaborations.